Cognos is a reporting system while Teradata is a data base engine/
repository. They serve 2 different functions. Most companies have both
a reporting system (Cognos, Business Objects, MicroStrategy, Focus) and
a data base engine/ repository (Oracle, Sybase, Teradata, IBM, Netezza,
etc). Moving from Cognos to Teradata generally means to me that you are
wanting to move from creating reports to designing data bases.

Teradata is used in the largest warehouses around the world. I believe
Oracle has a larger install base but as data warehouses get larger, most
transition to something else such as Netezza or Teradata due to
performance and capabilities issues.

I don,T think that terradata is only a data base engine... it's
more than that, here is what is terradata about :

"Teradata, (www.teradata.com) a division of NCR Corporation
(NYSE: NCR), is the global technology leader in enterprise data
warehousing, analytic applications and data warehousing
services. Organizations around the world rely on the power of
Teradata’s award-winning solutions to get a single, integrated
view of their business to enhance decision-making, customer
relationships and profitability"

Migrating from cognos to terradata is like changing your data
warehousing thinking... It's about switching from Kimball
philosophy to inmon's one...

From a long term career perspective, it isn't about products but
rather your ability to understand the the nature and use of
BI/DW in business. I mean, sure, you can crank out reports or
ETL or SQL for the rest of your life, but do you want to?

But, to your question, moving from a reporting tool to databases
won't hurt. If you can do it, anything to expand your range of
skills will only help in the long run. Aside from the
peculiarities of Teradata, basic database skills are
transferrable to any other RDB.

Hi,
We do not have any terradata data warehouse... We have Cognos BI as the front room and Oracle database ( Cognos Data manager ETL) as the Back Room. We are delivering SAIFI, CAIDI... IEEE KPIs for the energy distribution to the management team.
My point concerning terradata is that i'am a bit surprised that terradata is just a database engine... I thought that it's more than that ( It offers BI capabilities...).
Abdel ELOMARI.

Hi Kalman,
Yes, we can say that we take advantage of the two powerfull solutions ( Cognos for BI and Oracle for DB), between others :-)
Concerning KPI here are the definitions, It's about the improvment of the energy distribution. As you probably know, even if hydro-quebec is public-company, they have to prove that they are doing their job correctly and according to the standards ( in our case the IEEE). Yes they have their balanced scorecard (Cognos Metric Manager), and they must explain why things are going for bad or for good :-)
The first set of the IEEE KPI is about customers :
SAIFI stands for System Average Interruption Frequency
= Total Number of Customer Interrupted/ Total Number of Customers Served.
CAIDI stands for Customer Interruption Duration
= Sum of Customer Interruption Duration/ Total Number of Customers Interrupted
SAIDI stands for System Average Interruption Duration
= Sum of Customer Interruption Duration/ Total Number of Customers Served
MAIFI stands form Momentary Ave. Interruption Frequency
= Total Number of Customer Momentary Interruptions/ Total Number of Customers Served
The second set of indices is about the load :
ASIDI stands for Average System Interruption Duration
= Connected KVA Minutes Interrupted/ Total Connected KVA Served
ASIFI stands for Average System Interruption Frequency
= Connected KVA Interrupted/ Total Connected KVA Served
By the way i am based in montreal.
Hope this make things interesting :-)
Abdel ELOMARI.

So is Oracle, Sybase, DB2 and so on. They store data, you give
it SQL and it returns data. That is what a database engine
does.

An application is something you implement on a database engine.
Sure, all these vendors have 'applications', most are of dubious
value out of the box. Generally speaking, a vast majority of BI
implementations use third party products (Cognos, Microstrategy,
Business Objects, SAS or just plain old coding) to implement
their applications.

The choice of database engine is essentially immaterial to
achieving a working application. Any decent database engine can
be used to implement any application. (Codd proved that 40
years ago). Database choice has more to do with environment
(size, number of users, support, etc...) rather than analytic
capabilities.

If embedded analytic functions was the main driver for database
selection, then Oracle or SQL Server would be the hands down
winners.